#NSA #ACLU #IRS #Immigration #Taksim #DOJ – Does That Star Spangled Banner Yet Wave Over The Land Of The Free And The Home Of The Brave?

Update: MoonOnPluto in our comments section reports from Turkey. In one of his earlier comments MoonOnPluto writes:

“its becoming increasingly hard to communicate by internet here…..The state is being clever…they have not turned off the internet, they have slowed it to such a crawl that it has barely able to post (that way they can say they did not turn it off), you cannot watch videos, streaming is impossible…Facebook and Twitter is all but impossible in the cities of Istanbul and Ankara, it has I have been informed been turned off completely in the taksim area of istanbul and other likely protest areas (which i must add is home to all the major foreign hotels like Hilton, Marriot, Intercontinental). Hotels i believe have been told at present once those rooms empty near Gezi, not to relet them until authorised by the Govt. I am barely online here in SW Turkey, hence you understand how hard it is to get news to you. I am worried because some of the sources i have heard from have suddenly gone silent on FB. One friend in particular has not been heard from since Monday and she was posting regularly.

There is only one station here brave enough to show whats going on and that is a station called HALK TV, it seems to be the only one not controlled by the authorities. There have been various fake protestors infilitrated to create trouble.”

There’s more at that comment to read and more on the developments in Turkey from MoonOnPluto. Some of the people of Turkey are fighting their government to recapture and retain their dwindling liberties.

Er, sure, let’s prosecute reporters for all of the leaks they publish. Except for the ones we want published, though … right? Both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue leak information to reporters (and bloggers, for that matter) all the time. Most of it isn’t classified, but it if it wasn’t at least sensitive, it wouldn’t need to be leaked. It would end up in a press release that few bother to read at all.

We now know what part of the divide, which we write about below, Peter King falls into.

At this hour, on multiple battlefronts, what is at stake is government of the people, by the people and for the people. How we divide on the essential question of the day mostly scrambles the party line divisions. The side which prevails will determine if we remain a defiant and free people or if we surrender our liberties.

We are either going to fight back against the national security state which tramples on the Bill of Rights or we will see the democratic twilight’s last gleaming.

* * * * * *

We’ve been watching as Barack Obama supporters stay true to their Stalinist roots and applaud positions they used to denounce under a different president and a different candidate for the nomination. The cult of personality is strong with that cohort.

We’re also watching as Republicans/conservatives who should have learned after these past few years to distrust the national security state revert to form and denounce the information providers and applaud overwhelming government power. The very same people who have watched Barack Obama subvert the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the Tenth Amendment, then hide behind the Fifth Amendment now turn their back on the God given majesty of the individual American into whose home the king may not enter without force of constitutional law.

Barack Obama’s cult of personality is gleeful today citing the latest PEW poll in which a majority of Americans support the NSA programs if they help catch terrorists. Benjamin Franklin, can you hear us now? To their everlasting shame, it is Obama Dimocrats who bring about those majority results by completely changing their opposition to such oppression under George W. Bush to support for these obaminations under their cult of personality leader.

“The American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration over its “dragnet” collection of logs of domestic phone calls, contending that the once-secret program — whose existence was exposed by a former National Security Agency contractor last week — is illegal and asking a judge to both stop it and order the records purged. [snip]

The program “gives the government a comprehensive record of our associations and public movements, revealing a wealth of detail about our familial, political, professional, religious and intimate associations,” the complaint says, adding that it “is likely to have a chilling effect on whistle-blowers and others who would otherwise contact” the A.C.L.U. for legal assistance. [snip]

The program “gives the government a comprehensive record of our associations and public movements, revealing a wealth of detail about our familial, political, professional, religious and intimate associations,” the complaint says, adding that it “is likely to have a chilling effect on whistle-blowers and others who would otherwise contact” the A.C.L.U. for legal assistance. [snip]

The government has now declassified the existence of the program on domestic call record “metadata.” And the A.C.L.U. itself is a customer of Verizon Business Network Services — the subsidiary of Verizon Communications that was the recipient of a leaked secret court order for all its domestic calling records — which it says gives it direct standing to bring the lawsuit.

We’ll stand with the ACLU on this one. While we understand that some, such as John McCain, are honorable in their beliefs that the war on terrorism requires what George W. Bush did and what hypocrite Barack H. Obama is doing much worse, we believe that our side of the divide is the correct side to be in. We too want to oppose terrorism and fight the terrorists but we will not support a destruction of our rights for a false security.

“Such methods are in demand. But you can’t just listen to the phone call in Russia; you need a special order from court. This is how this should be done in civilized society while tackling terrorism with the use of any technical means. If it is in the framework of the law, then it’s ok. If not it is unacceptable,” Putin said answering the question of RT’s Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan. Commenting on Obama’s statement that “You can’t have 100 per cent security and 100 per cent privacy,” Putin disagreed, saying it is possible if done within the law.

We have fallen far when the Russian President lectures an American President about the rule of law; the Russian President sounds more like Benjamin Franklin and the American President sounds more like Stalin.

The war on terrorism must be fought by fighting the terrorists not violating the rights of American citizens. The politically correct will have the government search everyone instead of targeting those whose profiles fit terrorist profiles. To fight the war on terror do not infringe on the rights of Americans. Instead search those who are likely to commit terrorism. Stop subverting the rights of Americans and start killing Muslim killers. Do not target Methodist grandmas, target young male Muslims whose license plates are “terrorista #1” and Muslim men in the American military who shout paeans to Allah while killing Americans in Fort Hood.

* * * * * *

In order to escape the Hydra head of scandals that are slowly turning him into stone, Barack Obama will fly to Berlin, Germany next week. Barack Obama thought he could go back to Berlin and bathe once again in adulation instead of hecklers. But now this might all go badly.

European leaders are horrified at what has been revealed. If German citizens decide to protest against Barack Obama at the Brandenburg Gate our humiliation will be complete. First a Russian President lectures a corrupt American President. Then possibly German citizens protesting what American citizens should be protesting. Americans should be at the barricades hanging from lampposts the priests of the Cult of Obama who dare to sacrifice our Bill of Rights for a false security god.

At the beginning of this year we published a series of articles under the title “Unravel”. Our Unravel #4 was Egypt – Why Won’t Obama Demand Morsi Resign? We now ask the same question about Turkish Islamist dictator wannabee Tayyip Erdogan.

“Hi…Yes I am still in Turkey until Sunday, I am currently in the south western tip, there are still regular protests but what is going on in the big cities is nothing short of state sponsored terror and violence and flagrant intimidation, abuse and assault against peaceful protestors.

they need help and support and the turkish media is doing its best to ignore it under fear from the ruling party…this is not a democratic country anymore like it was under Ataturk ideals.”

Turkey’s citizens are fighting for their freedom. American citizens make excuses to surrender ours.

”Dear friends, currently the mainstream global media is keeping an eye on Taksim, Istanbul. Thus, the police forces have backed off and they have remarkably scaled down the number of attacks against the protesters. However, in the meantime the police terror in Ankara as it is now is on a much larger scale compared to the very beginning of Istanbul attacks. Tear gas is relentlessly being thrown inside apartments, people are suppressed by plastic bullets, illegal custody and physical assault. Things have escalated quickly and the scale of these attacks are rapidly increasing. We need to make benefit of social media once again to show the world what’s going on in Ankara right now. Here is a message from the people of Ankara: ”We have supported the protesters of Istanbul from the beginning, and now it is your turn to support us and the rest of Turkey. This resistance is clearly not limited to Istanbul, it has taken over all of the country. The festive atmosphere in Istanbul is just a trick to fool global media and soothe off the masses, yet nothing has been accomplished yet and things have just started actually.”

Today the government began its assault on Takim Square. Turkish citizens are resisting. In America the government continues its assault on individual rights and Obama supporters and others applaud.

Everyday the American people witness new scandals and abuses. Yesterday two new ones reared up. The IRS attack on political opponents using the full power of the state continues and Obama apologists continue to deny to themselves that something very wrong has happened to their hope and change.

The Department of Justice too continues its assaults against the Constitution. Excuses are made by Obama apologists here too.

The Benghazi scandal still remains without answers because the government cover up continues. American citizens sit back and watch their TV entertainments as Obama and others continue to lie to them.

For all that is wrong we do not counsel despair. We side with those that will fight for a new birth of freedom. These scandal floods are rousing the American people like a splash of cold water on a napping millennial. Historically the American giant slumbers and is slow to awaken but when the eyes open and the body rises, tyrants fall.

183 thoughts on “#NSA #ACLU #IRS #Immigration #Taksim #DOJ – Does That Star Spangled Banner Yet Wave Over The Land Of The Free And The Home Of The Brave?”

Jay Leon has been making strong jokes about Obama for a while now. They are not the usual jokes about Obama that make Obama not the butt of jokes but come out better in the telling. Jay Leno hit hard against Obama and his many lies.

Now Obama kiss a$$ David Letterman has been forced to do the same or lose the audience:

its becoming increasingly hard to communicate by internet here…..The state is being clever…they have not turned off the internet, they have slowed it to such a crawl that it has barely able to post (that way they can say they did not turn it off), you cannot watch videos, streaming is impossible…Facebook and Twitter is all but impossible in the cities of Istanbul and Ankara, it has I have been informed been turned off completely in the taksim area of istanbul and other likely protest areas (which i must add is home to all the major foreign hotels like Hilton, Marriot, Intercontinental). Hotels i believe have been told at present once those rooms empty near Gezi, not to relet them until authorised by the Govt. I am barely online here in SW Turkey, hence you understand how hard it is to get news to you. I am worried because some of the sources i have heard from have suddenly gone silent on FB. One friend in particular has not been heard from since Monday and she was posting regularly.

There is only one station here brave enough to show whats going on and that is a station called HALK TV, it seems to be the only one not controlled by the authorities. There have been various fake protestors infilitrated to create trouble.

A message from Orhan Sancak in Istanbul Taksim Square.

Please share ! This morning hundreds of police and water cannon vehicles marched into Taksim. There has been a peaceful environment for 10 days there. This morning at 7:30 people were still sleeping in their tents or having breakfast. When the police attacked with gas bombs a group of about 30 provocators who are NOT among us, NOT activists, NOT among the people who resist started attacking the police with molotov cocktails. Curiously enough the Toma s (water cannon vehicles) that are able to push away and separate hundreds of people within seconds (as we have seen many times in the two weeks) could not get rid of this group of provocators for over an hour now. Why? This is all a planned game to be played in front of the international media. The resisting people are still peaceful, they do not throw stones or molotov cocktails!!! This is a set up!”

Erdogan also pulled a Gaddafi yesterday ordering municipal employees in Ankara to attend his arrival. (You can see below the dictators order).

I had lived here for almost 10 years, no more, i cannot abide the way Turkey is going backwards, it was the major reason for moving. I have never seen this before ever here, it feels strange but good in a way that i know the young are willing to stand up and be counted against this tyranny.

Will check in when i can, its not easy to get internet easy at present.

But, in fact, there’s a common theme in all of these scandals: Abuse of power. And, what’s more, that abuse-of-power theme is what makes the NSA snooping story bigger than it otherwise would be. It all comes down to trust.

The justification for giving the government a lot of snooping power hangs on two key arguments: That snooping will make us safer and that the snooping power won’t be abused.

Has it made us safer? Anonymous government sources quoted in news reports say yes, but we know that all that snooping didn’t catch the Tsarnaev brothers before they bombed the Boston Marathon — even though they made extensive use of email and the Internet, and even though Russian security officials had warned us that they were a threat. The snooping didn’t catch Major Nidal Hasan before he perpetrated the Fort Hood Massacre, though he should have been spotted easily enough. It didn’t, apparently, warn us of the Benghazi attacks — though perhaps it explains how administration flacks were able to find and scapegoat a YouTube filmmaker so quickly . But in terms of keeping us safe, the snooping doesn’t look so great.

As for abuse, well, is it plausible to believe that a government that would abuse the powers of the IRS to attack political enemies, go after journalists who publish unflattering material or scapegoat a filmmaker in the hopes of providing political cover to an election-season claim that al-Qaeda was finished would have any qualms about misusing the massive power of government-run snooping and Big Data? What we’ve seen here is a pattern of abuse. There’s little reason to think that pattern will change, absent a change of administration — and, quite possibly, not even then. Sooner or later, power granted tends to become power abused. Then there’s the risk that information gathered might leak, of course, as recent events demonstrate.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. …

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Admin: Benjamin Franklin is reputed to have said: “I have often looked at that behind the president without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting. But now I… know that it is a rising…sun.”
———————–
And when Benjamin Franklin emerged from the constitutional convention Mrs. Powell asked him what have you give us he replied:

Sooner or later, power granted tends to become power abused. Then there’s the risk that information gathered might leak, of course, as recent events demonstrate.
—————————-
Sooner or later? How about since 2009?

Admin: Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.–Eisenhower

Sorry, Christie wouldn’t be jumping – my bad.
———————
Your bad? Not necessarily. It would depend on whether the the 300 pound mako had just had liposuction and jumped into the spindly arms of Obama. Then we would know for sure it was Christy.

Moon, time to get the Helloutta Dodge when they make it so people can’t communicate on the internet. After that, they may make it difficult to get out of the country.

The 30 provocators that you speak of remind me of anarchists here in the US that always take violence to the next level in a peaceful protest.
I have protested peacefully since I was a young pup, and I have seen this happen for decades.

Admin, this article is nothing short of inspiring – a call to action and activism. The responses of some Americans to the recent and ongoing efforts by the Obama government to invade our privacy and erode our freedoms, are disheartening, indeed. We know that even the most vigilant are at risk of complacency and acceptance, when exposed to the tactics of the Obama machine – personal attacks, double-talk, normalizing even his most blatant misdeeds, Bush blaming, and constant replaying the message (lies and half-truths) – aided by the voices of MSM who, like good foot soldiers, carry Obama’s message and do his bidding.

Some of the right wing pundits who have refused to condemn the actions of Obama, seemed to feel that because they supported George W Bush’s Patriot Act, their credibility would be at risk if they spoke out about Obama’s abuse of it. At least that’s the vibe that seems to be timidly oozing into the air waves of conservative radio. Some have gone so far as to say that while they did support Bush’s PA, it was never intended to be exploited as Obama’s administration is doing, but that’s about as far as they go. These conservative talking heads, along with some of the Republican elected officials seem to be all about posturing in order to advance themselves politically.

They want to get the most bang for their buck, and they seem more interested in targeting Hillary and her State Dept. That’s where they think they can do the most good for the Republican Party in 2016. Maybe some of these dullards are actually smart enough to see that Obama has already gone after her. He may be seen as their ticket to defeating a Hillary presidential run.

Admin, your demand that the people who are real threats be targeted in the “war on terror” is spot on. One of the most absurd and ironic excuses for invasion of the privacy of American citizens is the claim that it is necessary in the fight against terrorism, and the effort to keep this country safe. What would Obama and his people do with info exposing terrorists? Why would he want it? He has he and his White House have been more protective of radical Muslim terrorists than of US citizens.

The political posturing b both sides is infuriating. Any elected official who would rather see he

…I hate to say this…but the more I think about the NSA story…and coupled with everything else…the more I read, the more I listen, the more I think about it…

…more than in the usual casual generalized way…I think this NSA story is much more about money…big, big money…than security…and hence the need for even more secrecy…

…that Booz Allen Hamilton…the independent company that Snowden came from…the same company where our current Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was once an Executive…that is the same current Director of National Intelligence who is being reported to have lied to our Congress about NSA intelligence surveillance…

…Booz Allen Hamiltion makes most of its money from federal contracts…it was a big player in Dodd-Frank (hmmm, the Banks)…many of its senior executives go through the revolving door of high profile security positions in the US government (Clapper, Woosley, etc) and then into high paying executive positions at Booz…very incestuous and very lucrative for selective elites…

We have a ton of work ahead of us, but you have done an amazing job thus far with your phone calls and faxes and personal appearances.

The Senate a couple of minutes ago passed the Motion to Proceed to bring S. 744 to the floor for debate.

Two hours ago, 82 Senators voted YES to stop a filibuster. That vote allowed the Motion to Proceed.

But don’t be alarmed by that number, even though it is far above the 60 votes needed on the all-important final filibuster vote later this month.

A number of the Senators who voted to proceed have announced over the last few days that they will eventually vote against the bill unless it is significantly changed on the floor. And the changes they are demanding are being called unacceptable on the floor right now by Chief Amnestymeister Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

We have no doubt that your tens of thousands of calls the last two days planted very powerful seeds among many of the YES voters today that makes them realize that they are going to have a very hard time voting YES at the end when the question is not debate but passage.

The 15 Senators who today said that this bill is so hopelessly out of touch with the needs of America that it shouldn’t even be debated included four Senators who a couple of weeks ago were being touted in the media as prime swing voters who would push the final vote over 60:

Kirk of Illinois

Crapo of Idaho

Risch of Idaho

Barrasso of Wyoming

Congratulations to all of you from those three states who have done such a remarkable job of helping those Senators understand both where the voters are in your state and also the moral and practical imperative of stopping this bill.

Back in 2007, we also lost big on this procedural first vote to bring that amnesty bill to the floor. But we built on the solid opposition of a strong bloc of Senators to kill the amnesty on the final vote later.

(See below for the full list of the Core Champions for 2013.)

Tell Senators your reaction to vote

Give their staffers immediate feedback on the 2:45 p.m. vote.

Your immediate faxes and phone calls will show the Senators that the voters really are paying attention to their every move on this issue. And it will further encourage them in the right direction for the all-important final votes.

Your Action Board will have phone notes with talking points, the toll-free number into the DC office and phone numbers into local offices.1-888-995-6513

HERE ARE TODAY’S CHAMPIONS WHO TRIED TO STOP THE AMNESTY BILL IN ITS TRACKS

ALABAMA: Sessions & Shelby

ARKANSAS: Boozman

IDAHO: Crapo & Risch

ILLINOIS: Kirk

IOWA: Grassley

KANSAS: Roberts

LOUISIANA: Vitter

OKLAHOMA: Inhofe

SOUTH CAROLINA: Scot

TEXAS: Cruz

UTAH: Lee

WYOMING: Barrasso & Enzi

Everybody else voted YES, except for three who didn’t vote:

ALASKA: Murkowski

ARIZONA: McCain

OKLAHOMA: Coburn

I have no idea at this time why they didn’t vote. Murkowski and Coburn have both made strong nods toward voting for the bill recently but have been hammered by the voters.

Interestingly, during the second less-important vote (because it required only a majority, instead of 60 votes), Mississippi Sen. Cochran voted NO, after having voted yes on over-riding the filibuster.

NumbersUSA agreed with four Senators on the Judiciary Committee who said the 1,000+ page bill is such a monstrosity of special-interest gluttony that it did not deserve any debate at all.

Thanks to all of you who responded to Anne’s emailed alerts and to my phone calls the last two days pushing for a NO vote on bringing the bill to the floor. You laid a great foundation for the way many of these Senators will listen to the debate over the next two or three weeks.

This is the official statement that I sent out to the media:

“Many Senators who oppose the bill as now written nonetheless voted to move it to the floor in the mistaken belief that it can be improved into something that serves the interests of the American people when every section of it was written to serve narrow corporate and political special interests.

“Their biggest challenge will be showing compassion to the 20 million workers — disproportionately Black and Hispanic Americans — who can’t find a full-time job, which will require dramatic cuts in the 33 million work permits the bill offers illegal and authorized immigrants in the first decade.”

Sen. Sessions (R-Ala.) did a magnificent job in his speech on the floor today, speaking up not only for the 20 million unemployed but for the millions more Americans whose real wages have been driven downward by 30 years of high immigration.

He painted the picture very clearly that this is a bill about helping those affluent Americans who happen also to be greedy at the expense of the most struggling members of our society, and at the expense of the taxpayers.

Please don’t grow weary in well-doing.

Those of you who beat back the huge amnesty pushes in 2006, 2007 and 2010 know that we have to act nearly every day to beat the extravagantly funded special interests, but we know from battle experience that we CAN win!

was also starting to say…that the next big ticket item coming to make the selective elites big, big money is Ocare…nothing to do with health, nothing to do with health cost reductions…everything to do with making some folks very rick…

“It comes across as creepy,” Paul said according to Wisconsin Radio Network. “I understand FISA court orders to go after some known person, and their phone records and whoever they’re communicating with. But to do a blanket dragnet nationwide, that seems to go way beyond the scope of the law that I’m familiar with called the Patriot Act.”

The worthwhile parody site “Thomas Friedman is a great man” wonders where we got our information about Snowden and the 2012 election. They presume that Snowden only got his information recently so our criticism of Snowden for not providing his information to the American voter in 2012 is somehow unfair. But according to Glenn Greenwald Snowden was thinking about disclosing what he knew years ago.

If I could play this through American TVs i would. If I could play this to every Turk I would, If I could play this to the world, i would….This is the speech everyone should hear.

………………………………

That seems to be an eisenhower video but i actually posted the revolution speech from V from Vendetta but somehow it seems to have changed overnight to that, how did that happen….is YT mucking around or is someone within Turkey removing that about…thats bizarre…..

sorry i dont know whats happening, what video are you seeing because it seems to show something different here, its freaking me out here the way the internet has been acting, never seen so many deliberate blockings i have had to get round ever from here.

Secret Service “Visits” Outspoken Critic of Obama – Because of Twitter?

After you read this- you will wonder what country we are in.

Tom Francois is an outspoken critic of Barack Hussein Obama- and has a robust Twitter presence. He also likes to dabble with his “paint” program to create funny cartoons. He has never threatened the President in any way, manner or form.

On April 11, 2013, he heard relentless pounding on his door shouts of “Police!” The officers introduced themselves as members of The Secret Service and asked if they could “take a look around.”

Since Tom had nothing to hide (and he didn’t want any return visits) – he complied fully with their request. He even signed a consent to search his premises AND an “Authorization To Review Medical and Mental Health Records!”

They asked Tom if he ever left his state or traveled to Washington, D.C.

One Agent asked Tom if he has any intentions of “whacking” the President.” To which Tom replied- “Of course not. I wish him no harm. I disagree with his policies and actions and I make no bones about it. It’s my First Amendment Right and I intend to exercise it.”

When I spoke to Tom he said, “Yes, I am EXTREMELY critical of Obama in my posts, but I never cross the line and threaten his being. EVER. It’s just the idea of Obama’s Secret Service intruding on my life when they knew I wasn’t really a threat.”

The Secret Service had a thick FBI file- filled with screenshots of hundreds of posts. Said Tom, “I flat out told them ‘I have NEVER threatened Obama’s life! Yes, I despise him as you can plainly see, but I have that right!’ They actually ADMITTED and agreed with me that I hadn’t threatened Obama.”

They had run a background check and discovered that Tom legally owned two guns- and they asked to see them. Tom showed them his firearms. They asked, “Are they loaded?” Tom replied in the affirmative. “What good are guns if they aren’t loaded?”

So why harass Tom? “The Secret Service officers claimed that “they were concerned that since I have a large Twitter following, and the things I said could be acted upon by some nut case out there! What the hell? They turned my life upside down for THAT?”

Tom didn’t refuse the search because they just would have gone and gotten a warrant. “They would have proceeded to tear my house apart. No thanks. I have nothing to hide. They left empty-handed and my house is still intact.”

When they left Tom’s house, one Secret Service Agent ‘advised’- “Keep in mind, if you step over the line, we’ll come back for your guns.”

After the “visit” to Tom, the Secret Service also visited Tom’s 22 year old daughter- terrifying her and making her fear for her father’s safety. She asked them what they were going to do with the information about her Dad. They said they were going to “turn it over to Eric Holder- he has the last word on what to do, if anything.”

Should anyone have any doubt about the veracity of this report, Mr. Francois had the presence of mind to make copies of the Consent To Search (which expressly included computers, hardware, software, recording devices, cell phones, data storage, etc). It also states: “I understand that any contraband or evidence may be used against me in a court of law.”

The “Consent To Search” and the “Authorization To Review Medical and Mental Health Records” signed and dated by the special agents of the Secret Service- were furnished to this reporter.

Wake up, America.

This administration is spying on Americans, via the NSA and targeting Tea Party and religious groups for voter suppression via the IRS. Now- Obama’s Secret Service is paying personal “visits”- on law abiding citizens? This is TYRANNY!

Keep in mind, dear readers- this raid upon Tom Francois and his home – took place just 4 days before The Boston Bombing. Was this a good use of manpower?

Everyone should be outraged by this story. Republican, Democrat, Independent, Libertarian- EVERYONE!

This kind of intimidation and strong arm tactics CANNOT stand.

Just because a thin-skinned president doesn’t like what a private citizen posts (as his First Amendment Right) on the internet?

Do you approve of this “Fundamental Transformation of The United States of America?”

Woman ‘molested in COURTROOM by marshal before he orders her to be arrested with no explanation’

A 28-year-old woman has accused a court marshal of sexually assaulting her during a search in a courthouse witness room – and numerous court employees are accused of covering it up.

Monica Contreras, from Las Vegas, is suing Clark County and its courts, claiming her civil rights were violated when marshal Ron Fox groped her when she attended for a divorce hearing in August 2011.

Her two-year-old daughter was with her at the time.

Judge Patricia Donninger is accused of ignoring Contreras when she complained to her about the incident and a video shows Donninger with her back turned to Contreras, acting as if she doesn’t hear her.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

The 28-year-old claims that while they were in witness room, Fox touched her buttocks and breast and ordered her to lift up her shirt.

A later internal investigation by Clark County courts validated her claims.

Multiple employees are now under investigation for covering up the sexual assault. Fox was fired after a six-month investigation, though he denies the claims and is suing for unfair dismissal.

According to internal court documents, he ordered Contreras into a room for an unexplained drug search which he performed even though she asked for a female marshal.

The video shows the shocking events unfold in the courtroom after Contreras and Fox returned from the witness room.

After she announced to the court house that he sexually assaulted her, Fox ordered her to be arrested at which point Contreras asks: ‘For what sir? Why would I be arrested? Can you please tell me?’

He replies: ‘Because of false allegations made against a police officer,’ before telling her the only way she can avoid arrest is to recant the accusations.

But Contreras steps up the microphone and states: ‘You put me in a room. You asked me to lift up my shirt without a witness.’

Fox then orders her to be taken to jail.

Contreras kisses her daughter before being taken away. The two-year-old was taken to Child Haven.

Speaking to KLASTV, she said: ‘I just hope I did the right thing by telling internal affairs. It makes me feel good because now I know that I was right.’

Clark County court administration released a statement reading: ‘Court personnel are prohibited from commenting on the video because it’s a personnel matter. When the actions of any district court employee are called into question, the court immediately responds by conducting a fair, thorough investigation and, upon completion, taking appropriate action.’

……………………………….

So you cannot even trust, a police officer in a courtroom nor the female judge. The cop has been fired but what about that Judge and woman judge at that.

Turkey’s TV watchdog has fined four Turkish TV channels for 24 hour live-streaming of the protests

TV watchdog fines live streaming of Gezi protests for ‘harming development of children, youth’

The Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) has fined a number of channels, including Halk TV, for “harming the physical, moral and mental development of children and young people” by broadcasting coverage of the Gezi Park protests.

Ulusal TV, Cem TV and EM TV were also among the fined networks.

Halk TV, in particular, has gained unexpected popularity over its 24-hour live streaming of events around Istanbul, at a time when many mainstream media outlets gave little coverage to the ongoing protests.

The channel had been previously warned by RTÜK about a video clip the regulator deemed to be humiliating to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Although it does not have an organic link with the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), the station is known to have been financially supported by the CHP during the leadership of Deniz Baykal.

After being elected the new leader in May 2010, current CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu reportedly cut financial support to the channel, which is known for its antigovernment broadcasts.

State Department stymied probe into shooting of four Hondurans, whistleblower says

Hill’s team eyed in Honduras-slay ‘coverup’

WASHINGTON ­ A top State Department official stymied investigators trying to get to the bottom of four killings in Honduras involving DEA agents and local police ­ yet another revelation from internal memos leaked by a whistleblower claiming a pattern of coverups.

The incident ended in the deaths of two pregnant women and two men last year, after Honduran national police opened fire from a State Department-owned helicopter on a small boat.

Honduran police said drugs were involved, but locals said the boat was full of fishermen. The killings were referenced in a whistleblower memo obtained by The Post.

Nine Companies Tied to PRISM, Obama Will Be Smacked With Class-Action Lawsuit Wednesday

AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PalTalk, Skype, Yahoo! and Youtube will be named in the suit, attorney says

Former Justice Department prosecutor Larry Klayman amended an existing lawsuit against Verizon and a slew of Obama administration officials Monday to make it the first class-action lawsuit in response to the publication of a secret court order instructing Verizon to hand over the phone records of millions of American customers on an “ongoing, daily basis.”

Klayman told U.S. News he will file a second class-action lawsuit Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia targeting government officials and each of the nine companies listed in a leaked National Security Agency slideshow as participants in the government’s PRISM program.

According to the slideshow, the PRISM program allows government agents direct, real-time access to the servers of nine major tech companies, including AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PalTalk, Skype, Yahoo! and YouTube.

Update: MoonOnPluto in our comments section reports from Turkey. In one of his earlier comments MoonOnPluto writes:

“its becoming increasingly hard to communicate by internet here…..The state is being clever…they have not turned off the internet, they have slowed it to such a crawl that it has barely able to post (that way they can say they did not turn it off), you cannot watch videos, streaming is impossible…Facebook and Twitter is all but impossible in the cities of Istanbul and Ankara, it has I have been informed been turned off completely in the taksim area of istanbul and other likely protest areas (which i must add is home to all the major foreign hotels like Hilton, Marriot, Intercontinental). Hotels i believe have been told at present once those rooms empty near Gezi, not to relet them until authorised by the Govt. I am barely online here in SW Turkey, hence you understand how hard it is to get news to you. I am worried because some of the sources i have heard from have suddenly gone silent on FB. One friend in particular has not been heard from since Monday and she was posting regularly.

There is only one station here brave enough to show whats going on and that is a station called HALK TV, it seems to be the only one not controlled by the authorities. There have been various fake protestors infilitrated to create trouble.”

There’s more at that comment to read and more on the developments in Turkey from MoonOnPluto. Some of the people of Turkey are fighting their government to recapture and retain their dwindling liberties.

Er, sure, let’s prosecute reporters for all of the leaks they publish. Except for the ones we want published, though … right? Both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue leak information to reporters (and bloggers, for that matter) all the time. Most of it isn’t classified, but it if it wasn’t at least sensitive, it wouldn’t need to be leaked. It would end up in a press release that few bother to read at all.

We now know what part of the divide, which we write about below, Peter King falls into.

How to lose 2016 in one easy amnesty bill
Comments
Permalink
Posted by William A. Jacobson Wednesday, June 12, 2013 at 8:41am
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To say that there is disgust growing in the ranks is an understatement.

If adults who broke the law to come here illegally get citizenship, it will be a spit in the face of millions of legal immigrants who followed the rules, and many millions more who wait patiently on the other side of the oceans and borders. It will sent a message of lawlessness which will encourage more lawlessness.

Marco Rubio and others are imploding the party to achieve Chuck Schumer’s dream.

Mickey Kaus in The Daily Caller, Wake Up!:

If the conservative public were paying attention, the flaws and crude deceptions of the Schumer-Rubio bill would be common knowledge. They are so obvious, especially in the border enforcement area, that even Sen. Rubio pretends to be dissatisfied with his own bill. Byron York reports that many conservatives are shocked when they learn that Rubio’s bill doesn’t secure the border before legalization. It doesn’t! ”First comes the legalization,” as Rubio boasted yesterday. That’s been obvious for months, but now it’s news. (The border security requirements, themselves evanescent, would only prevent legalized illegals from moving to upgrade from legal status to getting green cards and citizenship.)

It’s time to wake up! Conservatives–while you are (rightly) excited about NSA snooping and partisan IRS corruption, the Congress is about to change America in a more profound, permanent way right under your noses. In the process it will hand President Obama the major second term achievement that will help him overcome the very scandals that are distracting you–or, rather, make his survival or re-ascendance unimportant. He will have won. Democrats will have shaped the future electorate to their own liking. They’ll have transformed what America is.

Judicial Watch announced today that documents obtained recently through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request show that the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) abandoned required background checks late last year, adopting, instead, costly “lean and lite” procedures in effort to keep up with the flood of amnesty applications spurred by President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) directive, which grants illegal aliens a two-year deferment from deportation.

Acting on a tip from a whistleblower at a federal law enforcement agency, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA request with DHS, for “all communications, memoranda, emails, policy guidance, directives, initiatives, and any other correspondence respecting the scope and extent of background checks to be performed (or not) on aliens applying to the Obama administration’s DACA program.” The FOIA was filed on October 26, 2012. The Immigration and National Security Act (INA) mandates a “coordinated, uniform, and efficient,” system of background checks. Instead, the FOIA documents reveal a costly, haphazard process, with only cursory review for the backgrounds of illegal aliens seeking “deferred status.”

As President Barack Obama prepares to visit Germany next week, German officials are turning up the heat on the U.S. over its Internet surveillance, according to reports, with one official calling the program “Stasi methods.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will raise the issue with Obama when he visits on Wednesday, her spokesman told Reuters.

One official, Markus Ferber, a German who sits in the European Parliament, said the U.S. government was using “American-style Stasi methods,” Reuters reported.

“I thought this era had ended when the [German Democratic Republic] fell,” he said, according to the report.

German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger called reports of the surveillance “deeply disconcerting” in an op-ed in the German news magazine Der Spiegel, saying the U.S. should explain given the importance of the global Internet.

“The suspicion of excessive surveillance of communication is so alarming that it cannot be ignored. For that reason, openness and clarification by the U.S. administration itself should be paramount at this point,” she wrote.

Obama will be visiting Germany for official meetings after attending the G-8 summit in Northern Ireland next week.

If one of the several German political parties decides to protest the Obama visit they will be able to mobilize numbers sufficient to embarrass Obama.

CNN’s Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour, anchoring the coverage of the ongoing Turkish protests for her network, delved into analysis on Tuesday in an effort to isolate why the young, secular Turks had taken to the streets to express their dissatisfaction with the government in Ankara. She noted that the nation had just recently curtailed the use of images of alcohol in public, but found that move roughly equivalent to the restrictions on alcohol imagery in the West. Oddly, Amanpour did not find it worth mentioning that those restrictions are made for public health reasons in the West but for religious reasons in Turkey.

Re first hand reporting from MoonOnPluto. Thank you so very much. Early today the protestors there were said to a be a rough equivalent of OWS here. In fact WPIX reporter was positioned in Zucotti Park as he reported fairly extenslvely (for US local rpt) on the uprising in Turkey. Does that comparison approach the reality you understand there?

Admin: in my view, the battle lines have been drawn. They have been drawn in such a way as to obscure what is really going on. We are told that the purpose of the PRISM program is to prevent terrorism. And because it is shrouded in national security, we cannot discuss it. The current debate accepts that as a given.

I am willing to accept that national security was the original purpose of this spying.

But I am categorically unwilling to accept the premise that the underlying technology is not being used for other purposes. For example, we have all wondered how a cipher like Obama could come out of nowhere and win two elections and maintain high poll numbers despite multiple scandals, and proven corruption. And now we learn that Eric Schmidt and Google are at the center of his operation just as they were with PRISM.

Snowdon is a hero, and I say that without reservation. He has opened a portal into a world of shadow and substance which we need to know about, because the ultimate goal of this technology and people like Schmidt is not just to control elections but to control the world. And they do this under the guise of protecting us, and catering to our materialistic instincts.

The current debate focuses on the right of the government to listen to telephone conversations. But Schmidt and his ilk are not particularly interested in that, because they know that verbal or even written conversations are an unreliable indicator of what people are really thinking. They are more interested in behavior. Consequently, they rely on data mining, algorithms (mathematical formulas which track predictability and behavior), and neurologistic programing.

They use this data to prepare files on everyone. It might be all people in a given area who like chocolate ice cream. But that information can then be correlated with other information to develop a composite picture of the individual, and tailor the political message in such a way as to influence voter behavior. Right now, when you turn on your computer you get pop ups from websites you have never visited which correlate with those you have visited which offer you an array of in kind goods and services. This may warm the heart of Dana Perino, but it also means that someone on the other end has you or me all figured out.

When you think about things this way, you begin to appreciate the potential of this technology to influence markets, elections, and to generate waves of national hysteria such as we saw in the 2008 election. We blamed it all on the media, but there was far more to it than that. Indeed, they too were subject to such influence, then as now. Not surprisingly, the stage is being set for the 2016 election by these same people.

The reader will decide whether this is fact or fiction. To me, however, it suggests why Snowdon is a hero and why we must get to the bottom of this–if we can.

They are in no way like OWS whatsoever…..These guys are mostly peaceful wanting a return to their secular values and out from under what is becoming an islamized agenda unlike OWS which to create havoc.

at the risk of repeating myself…I really think money is at the root of alot of what NSA is doing…

this morning by chance I happened to catch Loretta Sanchez on Washington Journal…she was trying to be as forthright as she could…paraphrasing and basically she talked about how difficult it is to understand anything of what the intelligence community asks for…

their budgets are convulded extremely difficult to understand and she said that often the congress has no idea where the money is going…(not excusing them, but here is a big red flag)

she said trying to understand or ask the right questions to the NSA and the intelligence community is like trying to find a “needle in the haystack”

the Congress does not get answers to their questions…when they even are afforded the opportunity to formulate the question…

she described the process of even trying to get security questions answered…the congressional representative has to request and reserve a private, I think she called it a “shiff” room…then you have to get the intelligence official you need to ask the question to agree to meet you at that room at an agreed upon time…

I believe she said you get one half hour (not sure about that part) and she said you cannot take any notes or bring anything in with you when you go to the meeting…

then she went on that once you finally get to that point and have this arranged meeting, the intelligence officials start taking up alot of the time talking and deflecting from the questions you are specifically asking them

she said … when talking to the intelligence officials, whether in front of the congress or in that special arranged meeting, they always fall back on the default answer “that is being investigated and they cannot talk about it” and variations on that answer…so they never give an answer…

she said the budget for intelligence has steadily increased and the Congress really has no way of knowing where the money is going…

next, I happened to catch Congressman Keith Ellison on MSNBC and he was also very forthright…and while he said he supports O…he says this goes beyond O…he said that O will not always be the President and the Executive branch must be held accountable to congress…and in that sense, it doesn’t matter that O is the president…it has gotten worse under O

Ellison goes on to confirm a lot of what Sanchez says…saying that the intelligence community and the excutive branch obfuscate when Congress is trying to get answers and oversee what they are doing…

He said he and others voted against the Patriot Act and the Congress has been kept in the dark…basically again confirming what Sanchez is saying…he also says he is not sure how that Utah NSA center came into place, where or how the money got funded for that…or approved for that…etc

****************************************************************

follow the money…the congress has no way of itemizing and seeing specifically where billions and billions of dollars are going…and when they have tried to get answers…the intelligence community and executive branch blow them off…and patronize them with answers like “we are taking care of that…we are investigating that” and no answers are provided

I am not letting the congress off the hook…i believe alot of them are on the gravy train…but their oversight is being minimized by NSA and executive branch…no doubt about that…the congress is not meeting their responsibility of oversight over the intelligence community and executive branch…

corruption all around…and these private contractors (many from govt) are getting very very rich on taxpayers dollar

BERLIN (Reuters) – German outrage over a U.S. Internet spying program has broken out ahead of a visit by Barack Obama, with ministers demanding the president provide a full explanation when he lands in Berlin next week and one official likening the tactics to those of the East German Stasi.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman has said she will raise the issue with Obama in talks next Wednesday, potentially casting a cloud over a visit that was designed to celebrate U.S.-German ties on the 50th anniversary John F. Kennedy’s famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech.

Government surveillance is an extremely sensitive topic in Germany, where memories of the dreaded Stasi secret police and its extensive network of informants are still fresh in the minds of many citizens.

In a guest editorial for Spiegel Online on Tuesday, Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said reports that the United States could access and track virtually all forms of Internet communication were “deeply disconcerting” and potentially dangerous.

“The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less free it is,” she said.

“The suspicion of excessive surveillance of communication is so alarming that it cannot be ignored. For that reason, openness and clarification by the U.S. administration itself is paramount at this point. All facts must be put on the table.”

Markus Ferber, a member of Merkel’s Bavarian sister party who sits in the European Parliament, went further, accusing Washington of using “American-style Stasi methods”.

“I thought this era had ended when the DDR fell,” he said, using the German initials for the failed German Democratic Republic.

Opposition parties have jumped on the issue, keen to put a dampener on the Merkel-Obama talks and prevent them from boosting the chancellor as she gears up for a September parliamentary election in which she is seeking a third term.

“This looks to me like it could become one of the biggest data privacy scandals ever,” Greens leader Renate Kuenast told Reuters.

TEMPERED ENTHUSIASM

Obama is due to land in Berlin on Tuesday night, hold talks and a news conference with Merkel on Wednesday and then give a speech in front of thousands at the Brandenburg Gate.

It is his first trip to the German capital since he passed through in 2008 during his first campaign for the presidency, giving a speech at the Victory Column in the Tiergarten park that attracted 200,000 adoring fans.

Five years on, Germans are still enamored of Obama: a poll last week showed 82 percent view him favorably.

But his failure to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison, extensive use of drones to kill suspected al Qaeda militants and the latest revelations about the secret surveillance program, codenamed PRISM, have tempered enthusiasm.

According to documents leaked to the Washington Post and Guardian newspapers, the program gave U.S. officials access to emails, web chats and other communications from companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and Skype.

Obama has defended it as a “modest encroachment” on privacy and reassured Americans that no one is listening to their phone calls.

But U.S. law puts virtually no eavesdropping restrictions on the communications of foreigners, meaning in theory that Washington could be delving into the private Internet communications of Germans and other Europeans.

Peter Schaar, the German official with responsibility for data privacy, said this was grounds for “massive concern” in Europe.

“The problem is that we Europeans are not protected from what appears to be a very comprehensive surveillance program,” he told the Handelsblatt newspaper. “Neither European nor German rules apply here, and American laws only protect Americans.”

Snowden saw what I saw: surveillance criminally subverting the constitution

So we refused to be part of the NSA’s dark blanket. That is why whistleblowers pay the price for being the backstop of democracy

Thomas Drake

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 12 June 2013 07

What Edward Snowden has done is an amazingly brave and courageous act of civil disobedience.

Like me, he became discomforted by what he was exposed to and what he saw: the industrial-scale systematic surveillance that is scooping up vast amounts of information not only around the world but in the United States, in direct violation of the fourth amendment of the US constitution.

The NSA programs that Snowden has revealed are nothing new: they date back to the days and weeks after 9/11. I had direct exposure to similar programs, such as Stellar Wind, in 2001. In the first week of October, I had an extraordinary conversation with NSA’s lead attorney. When I pressed hard about the unconstitutionality of Stellar Wind, he said:

“The White House has approved the program; it’s all legal. NSA is the executive agent.”

It was made clear to me that the original intent of government was to gain access to all the information it could without regard for constitutional safeguards. “You don’t understand,” I was told. “We just need the data.”

In the first week of October 2001, President Bush had signed an extraordinary order authorizing blanket dragnet electronic surveillance: Stellar Wind was a highly secret program that, without warrant or any approval from the Fisa court, gave the NSA access to all phone records from the major telephone companies, including US-to-US calls. It correlates precisely with the Verizon order revealed by Snowden; and based on what we know, you have to assume that there are standing orders for the other major telephone companies.

It is technically true that the order applies only to meta-data. The problem is that in the digital space, metadata becomes the index for content. And content is gold for determining intent.

This executive fiat of 2001 violated not just the fourth amendment, but also Fisa rules at the time, which made it a felony – carrying a penalty of $10,000 and five years in prison for each and every instance. The supposed oversight, combined with enabling legislation – the Fisa court, the congressional committees – is all a kabuki dance, predicated on the national security claim that we need to find a threat. The reality is, they just want it all, period.

So I was there at the very nascent stages, when the government – wilfully and in deepest secrecy – subverted the constitution. All you need to know about so-called oversight is that the NSA was already in violation of the Patriot Act by the time it was signed into law.

snip

I differed as a whistleblower to Snowden only in this respect: in accordance with the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, I took my concerns up within the chain of command, to the very highest levels at the NSA, and then to Congress and the Department of Defense. I understand why Snowden has taken his course of action, because he’s been following this for years: he’s seen what’s happened to other whistleblowers like me.

By following protocol, you get flagged – just for raising issues. You’re identified as someone they don’t like, someone not to be trusted. I was exposed early on because I was a material witness for two 9/11 congressional investigations. In closed testimony, I told them everything I knew – about Stellar Wind, billions of dollars in fraud, waste and abuse, and the critical intelligence, which the NSA had but did not disclose to other agencies, preventing vital action against known threats. If that intelligence had been shared, it may very well have prevented 9/11.

But as I found out later, none of the material evidence I disclosed went into the official record. It became a state secret even to give information of this kind to the 9/11 investigation.

snip

The NSA is wiring the world; they want to own internet. I didn’t want to be part of the dark blanket that covers the world, and Edward Snowden didn’t either.

We are seeing an unprecedented campaign against whistleblowers and truth-tellers: it’s now criminal to expose the crimes of the state. Under this relentless assault by the Obama administration, I am the only person who has held them off and preserved his freedom. All the other whistleblowers I know have served time in jail, are facing jail or are already incarcerated or in prison.

Snowden clearly feels some level of comfort. He plans to stay in Hong Kong until “he is asked to leave,” he says, and feels enough personal security to grant interviews with local media. (It’s not clear if today’s interview was conducted in person or by telephone.) As a lawyer interviewed by the Morning Post notes, his public profile makes it harder for the United States to step in. On Sunday, for example, Hong Kong residents will hold a march in support of Snowden.

With the exception of Cantor, the House leadership group, i.e. Boehner, McCarthy and Rogers do not strike me as much of an A team. To say they are better than their predecessors, i.e. Luberack, Stenny and Honest Jim Clyburn is not saying much. In fact, it is saying nothing. Their shoot first ask questions later, or don’t ask any questions at all because it is too much work does little to inspire confidence. It will be interesting to watch what happens when the full congress gets the NAS briefing. Vinson, who signed the NSA Surveillance Order, is a solid guy. He is a very disciplined thinker, unlike the magistrate who approved the surveilling of Rosen. So it will be interesting to find out the why and the wherefore. Congress will enlighten us, I mean spill the beans, so we will know.

(CNSNews.com) – The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has cancelled its purchase order for surveillance equipment, which had included coffee trays with hidden cameras and cameras that could be hidden in plants.

Judge Vincent wrote the opinion for the Tenth Circuit striking down Obama care. If Roberts had used that well reasoned opinion as a road map, then we would not be headed down the tack to the Obamacare train wreck which lies down the track within the next year.

He said he and others voted against the Patriot Act and the Congress has been kept in the dark…basically again confirming what Sanchez is saying…he also says he is not sure how that Utah NSA center came into place, where or how the money got funded for that…or approved for that…etc

Afternoon all! Praying for your safety moon…..

S, I posted this a few threads ago. The Utah site and what it is for was not completely unknown. Dana Priest has been investigating the origin and funding of what she terms ‘The Secret America’ for over a decade now. If rep. Ellison doesn’t know where the money comes from, he need only watch PBS. It was a shocking revalation and is worth two hours of your time….

“They were unwilling to change the regulations to save the life of this 10 year old child.”
******
The allocation criteria are established by a private organization UNOS not HHS. Are we now going to turn over transplant organ allocation to the MSM and their most “compelling” story of the day. Organ allocation isn’t zero sum, there are only about 120-150 lung transplants a year do to the scarcity of suitable donors and pediatric donors are even more rare. The “argument” was making the dividing line between the pediatric and adult “list” at 14 years.

I don’t know the specifics of this case but as a hypothetical, suppose she has received lungs from the adult list because of the media story and a Federal judge. A patient with cystic fibrosis usually requires both lungs to be transplanted so now two adults on the “adult” list may not be getting the single lung transplant that they need to live.

These are not easy questions but I don’t want media hacks, govt. flunkies, federal judges and especially people with political agendas making these decisions. The media would have done a major public service is they had made the story about the lack of donors rather “Child given death sentence by heartless govt officials”.

n an unusual personnel move, the White House announced this afternoon that the President has withdrawn the nomination of Avril Haines to be the Legal Adviser of the State Department and is appointing her instead to be the Deputy Director of the CIA, to succeed Mike Morrell, who is retiring. The Deputy Director position does not require Senate confirmation.
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Formerly, a White House legal advisor. . .

thanks, The Rock…i will watch that a little later…I did just watch that Sanchez -Washington Journal video again (@ 50 minutes)…at the very end of the interview the host mentions that Glenn Greenwald says there is alot more to come out and she asks Sanchez if that was discussed in the briefing the congress received yesterday from the intelligence people…

and Sanchez says there is a lot more that the people do not know…she could not speak to whether it will be leaked out or not…but she said what has been leaked so far is “only the tip of the iceberg” she implied that it is all ‘cumulative’

btw…she was also asked about the funding for Utah…and she could not give a definitve answer about how it got funded, she basically said “she did not know” etc…

the more we learn, the more you realize how ineffectual the congress is against the intelligence people and the contractors and the Executive Branch that just does what it wants

she voted against the patriot act and its reinstatement under Obama…but she kept saying that under current law, everything that the NSA is doing is legal…don’t know if she and the congress have been brainwashed by the intelligence people to believe that or if it is true…that’s the part i don’t get…

…if congress is saying now they did not authorize certain things…then it seems NSA and Executive Branch just went ahead and assumed legality for what they are doing…i don’t know what happened to the 4th amendment in between…

frankly i think it is all meant to be as confusing…and secret…as possible so no one, including the congress understands what the hell is going on…as long as congress just keeps giving them the money…it will just continue…

no one can account for where the billions of our dollars are going…it just goes…

SHV
June 12, 2013 at 5:24 pm
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I agree with you. It should be a medical decision, made by qualified medical experts, based on patient needs and available resources. Here however there was a great deal of external influence. By then, the medical decision process came to an impasse and a child was facing death. Under those circumstances I as a laymen found the answer by Sellibus to be Kafkaesque.

When the author of The Patriot Act says the Obama Administration and his NASA are taking it too far two reactions are possible: One is to say, you should have thought about this risk before you introduced it. The other reaction, the one I subscribe to, is whether he is just doing a cya or is acting as the canary in the cave, it behooves us to listen, because in the final analysis this isn’t just about terrorists, it is also about us. In point of fact, surveillance in the age of Obama may be less about fighting terrorism and more about controlling the people as the Dean of the US House of Representatives, John Dingle (D-Mi) so aptly put it in the context of Obamacare. If the sole purpose of this sophisticated and costly dragnet was to prevent terrorism, then Boston would have never happened.
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Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, who introduced the PATRIOT Act on the House floor in 2001, has declared that lawmakers’ and the executive branch’s excuses about recent revelations of NSA activity are “a bunch of bunk.”

In an interview on Laura Ingraham’s radio show Wednesday morning, the Republican congressman from Wisconsin reiterated his concerns that the administration and the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court have gone far beyond what the PATRIOT Act intended. Specifically, he said that Section 215 of the act “was originally drafted to prevent data mining” on the scale that’s occurred.

Sensenbrenner, the current chairman on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations, suggested that the secret nature of the FISA court has prevented appropriate congressional oversight over the NSA’s activities.

When asked whether he agreed with those in Washington calling leaker Edward Snowden a traitor, Sensenbrenner responded, “No, I don’t agree,” and said that he would not have known the extent of abuse by the FISA court and the NSA without Snowden’s disclosures.

The congressman has earlier said he believes the PATRIOT Act needs to be amended to protect Americans’ privacy.

“Black Congressman James Clyburn’s “gut” tells him that whistleblower Edward Snowden is conspiring with others to “embarrass” President Obama. “Clyburn’s gut isn’t a bit queasy about the dramatic expansion of the National Security State, as long as Big Brother is Black.” In the narrow worldview of the Black Misleadership Class, it’s Obama uber alles.”

“If one good thing has come out of Barack Obama’s ascension to the White House, it is that his rise has exposed the appalling backwardness of the Black Misleadership Class – a petty and puny-minded cohort whose worldview is so narrow, it can accommodate only one issue: the political fortunes of the First Black President. Nothing else matters to these incredibly parochial political midgets – not issues of war and peace, nor the precarious state of planetary ecology, not even the economic well-being of the masses of Black Americans. Certainly, not civil liberties. Only Obama.

Congressman James Clyburn is supposed to represent the interests of more than half a million South Carolinians, the majority of them Black. One might expect a Black congressman to have more than a passing interest in the Bill of Rights and protection of civil liberties. The revelation that Uncle Sam is building up a dossier on everyone with a telephone and a computer connection should be at least mildly upsetting to anyone that calls himself a Black leader. But Congressman Clyburn has but one priority: to protect the image and legacy of Barack Obama..”
(snip)

When asked whether he agreed with those in Washington calling leaker Edward Snowden a traitor, Sensenbrenner responded, “No, I don’t agree,” and said that he would not have known the extent of abuse by the FISA court and the NSA without Snowden’s disclosures.
————————————————
That is the response of a thinking individual. Sebenius would appreciate it because it reflects balance, fortunately not the kind of balance she performed when she gave short shrift to the First Amendment, but the kind that says to hell with this first the verdict then the facts which you see from the political class. I want to know what he can tell us and then weigh it against the perceived harm. Only then can anyone say with assurance that Snowden was a hero, traitor, both or neither.

Take the worse case scenario–suppose he does turn over sensitive information to another government. I will be the first to agree that it wrong and it does have the potential to do collateral damage for a period of time, just as the disclosures by the Church Committee did in the early 1970’s, just as Leon Panetta did with his disclosures on Seal Team 6, and just as Tom Donolin did with his liasons with the New York Times writer who is doing a see all tell all book. If the problem is as big here as it could be then the China risk may seem pale by comparison. If not then not. But at point we do not know where this thing is going.

Although some media outlets have reacted to the Snowden story with apprehension that such a young employee of a government contractor would have such wide-ranging spy capabilities, the disclosure presents other questions. Journalist Tim Shorrock, who also blogged recently about the rise of Palantir, reported that some 70 percent of the nation’s intelligence gathering budget is spent on private contractors. Could any of these firms, which number in the hundreds, use their terrorist-seeking espionage weapons against their fellow Americans?

If what Snowden claimed is true, he could have spied upon judges and journalists and sold that information to powerful domestic or foreign interests. At one point during the discussions about how to use their technologies to attack activists, Barr had met with Booz Allen Hamilton senior vice president Bill Wansley. The disclosure of the Palantir-Berico-HBGary proposals suggest other abuses could be lurking out there, from a rogue employee to a carefully planned effort to spy on activists.

***************************************

or spy on anyone for that matter…here is where sabatoge and blackmail enter…

“If one good thing has come out of Barack Obama’s ascension to the White House, it is that his rise has exposed the appalling backwardness of the Black Misleadership Class – a petty and puny-minded cohort whose worldview is so narrow, it can accommodate only one issue: the political fortunes of the First Black President. Nothing else matters to these incredibly parochial political midgets – not issues of war and peace, nor the precarious state of planetary ecology, not even the economic well-being of the masses of Black Americans. Certainly, not civil liberties. Only Obama.
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That paragraph sums up succintly what Jim Clyburn is all about.

The NSA “leaks” are fracturing the Uni-Party structure but there is a political vacuum for those who oppose the evolving Police State of America. Paul, Cruz and a few other Rs have more in common with Wyden, Udall than they do with Boehner, King, Feinstein, etc. Is there a way for leadership to emerge that will have Constitutional Restoration as a goal and organize primary challenges to the fascists??

Ka-ta-re-na has a fancy edu and is a charter member of the limosene liberal set.

Like others in her social set, she hated Bush, believed that Obama was the salvation, and unless she is as deluded as Matthews (who has shed his progressive credentials under Bush and become a borne again apologist for spying on Americans since Obama took office) she has got feel that she was deceived.

I was reading the latest edition of her magazine The Nation the other night. It is now on newspaper so either times are tight or they have developed the look of the old Weekly Reader, which was standard fare when I was i grade school. There was an intriguing article by a guy who professed to be a latter day Jacobin–we have not seen the likes of them since the glory days of the French Revolution. He came across as an articulate cross between Michael Moore and Bluebeard the pirate. He said the only solution is revolution. Made me want to take up fencing. No mention of Obama however, so perhaps the bloom is off the rose. It damned well should be.

The NSA “leaks” are fracturing the Uni-Party structure but there is a political vacuum for those who oppose the evolving Police State of America. Paul, Cruz and a few other Rs have more in common with Wyden, Udall than they do with Boehner, King, Feinstein, etc. Is there a way for leadership to emerge that will have Constitutional Restoration as a goal and organize primary challenges to the fascists??
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That is exactly right. Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen feel the same way.

Connecting the Dots on PRISM, Phone Surveillance, and the NSA’s Massive Spy Center
By James Bamford 06.12.13 6:30 AM

Bamford updates his story in WIRED on NSA spy center…

Physically, the NSA has always been well protected by miles of high fences and electrified wire, thousands of cameras, and gun-toting guards. But that was to protect the agency from those on the outside trying to get in to steal secrets. Now it is confronting a new challenge: those on the inside going out and giving the secrets away.

While the agency has had its share of spies, employees who have sold top-secret documents to foreign governments for cash, until the last few years it has never had to deal with whistleblowers passing top-secret information and documents to the press because their conscience demanded it. This in a place where no employee has ever written a book about the agency (unlike the prolific CIA, where it seems that a book contract is included in every exit package).

As someone who has written many books and articles about the agency, I have seldom seen the NSA in such a state. Like a night prowler with a bag of stolen goods suddenly caught in a powerful Klieg light, it now finds itself under the glare of nonstop press coverage, accused of robbing the public of its right to privacy. Despite the standard denials from the agency’s public relations office, the documents outline a massive operation to secretly keep track of everyone’s phone calls on a daily basis – billions upon billions of private records; and another to reroute the pipes going in and out of Google, Apple, Yahoo, and the other Internet giants through Fort Meade – figuratively if not literally.

But long before Edward Snowden walked out of the NSA with his trove of documents, whistleblowers there had been trying for years to bring attention to the massive turn toward domestic spying that the agency was making. Last year in my Wired cover story on the enormous new NSA data center in Utah, Bill Binney, the man who largely designed the agency’s worldwide eavesdropping system, warned of the secret, nationwide surveillance. He told how the NSA had gained access to billions of billing records not only from AT&T but also from Verizon. “That multiplies the call rate by at least a factor of five,” he said. “So you’re over a billion and a half calls a day.” Among the top-secret documents Snowden released was a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order proving the truth to Binney’s claim and indicating that the operation was still going on.

snip

Without documents to prove their claims, the agency simply dismissed them as falsehoods and much of the mainstream press simply accepted that. “We don’t hold data on U.S. citizens,” Alexander said in a talk at the American Enterprise Institute last summer, by which time he had been serving as the head of the NSA for six years.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made similar claims. At a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee last March, he was asked, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” To which Clapper responded, “No, sir.” The documents released by Snowden, pointing to the nationwide collection of telephone data records and not denied by government officials, prove the responses untrue.

The deception by General Alexander is especially troubling. In my new cover story for Wired’s July issue, which will be published online Thursday, I show how he has become the most powerful intelligence chief in the nation’s history. Never before has anyone in America’s intelligence sphere come close to his degree of power, the number of people under his command, the expanse of his rule, the length of his reign, or the depth of his secrecy. A four-star Army general, his authority extends across three domains: He is director of the world’s largest intelligence service, the National Security Agency; chief of the Central Security Service; and commander of the U.S. Cyber Command. As such, he has his own secret military, presiding over the Navy’s 10th Fleet, the 24th Air Force, and the Second Army.

The article also sheds light on the enormous privatization not only of the intelligence agencies but now also of Cyber Command, with thousands of people working for little-known companies hired to develop the weapons of cyber war, cyber targeting, and cyber exploitation. The Snowden case demonstrates the potential risks involved when the nation turns its spying and eavesdropping over to companies with lax security and inadequate personnel policies. The risks increase exponentially when those same people must make critical decisions involving choices that may lead to war, cyber or otherwise.

At a time when the NSA has lost its way and is increasingly infringing on the privacy of ordinary Americans, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that NSA employees — whether working for the agency or for one of its contractors — would feel the obligation to alert the public to the secret acts being carried out in its name. The only surprise is that we haven’t seen more such disclosures. General Alexander will surely use all his considerable power to prevent them. Don’t be surprised if he fails.

James Bamford is the author of the The Shadow Factory: the Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.

“They were unwilling to change the regulations to save the life of this 10 year old child.”
******
The allocation criteria are established by a private organization UNOS not HHS. Are we now going to turn over transplant organ allocation to the MSM and their most “compelling” story of the day. Organ allocation isn’t zero sum, there are only about 120-150 lung transplants a year do to the scarcity of suitable donors and pediatric donors are even more rare. The “argument” was making the dividing line between the pediatric and adult “list” at 14 years.

I don’t know the specifics of this case but as a hypothetical, suppose she has received lungs from the adult list because of the media story and a Federal judge. A patient with cystic fibrosis usually requires both lungs to be transplanted so now two adults on the “adult” list may not be getting the single lung transplant that they need to live.

These are not easy questions but I don’t want media hacks, govt. flunkies, federal judges and especially people with political agendas making these decisions. The media would have done a major public service is they had made the story about the lack of donors rather “Child given death sentence by heartless govt officials”.
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The issue of race is a factor, as well, according an interview I recently heard on FOX Radio. (I just have to tune into the real right wingers from time to time – it’s good for a laugh, and it makes me feel less crazy. lol) The interview was with a physician who holds a government position with a transplant program. He said that because fewer blacks than whites donate organs, in order to make organ distribution more racially equitable, the compatibility standards have been altered, allowing blacks the same opportunity as whites to be granted an organ. My understanding from this physician was that typically, the number of antigens is higher in blacks than whites, To facilitate greater equality, the previously required antigen level had been increased in order to allow greater numbers of blacks to achieve a match with organs donated by whites. At least I think that’s the terminology this doctor used. If not, it’s close. Regardless, the end result was that while more blacks are receiving organs, the rejection rate is higher because of the altered compatibility standards, with the end result being that available organs are being used at an increased rate.

I’m not saying this is unfair. Obviously, the hope is that people can get the treatment needed to live and thrive. I just think an initiative to encourage blacks to donate organs would be a good idea, as well. Obviously, the most desirable outcome would be for the organ to be accepted and become functional, saving the life of the recipient, and allowing for a reasonable degree of wellness. Both blacks and whites would benefit from receiving organs with which their body had the highest possible degree of compatibility.

Obviously, there are no easy answers when it comes to the issue of transplants, especially since someone had to die (in most cases – with kidneys being an exception) in order for another person to live.

there is more by Bamford on Wired…scary stuff…it makes one think about how and why the last two elections…perhaps, selections, evolved the way they did…especially with the acquiesence of O supporters who were once resistant to the same actions by Bush…they are now very compliant and malleable…less resistance to the program and policy…perfect set-up

He said that because fewer blacks than whites donate organs, in order to make organ distribution more racially equitable, the compatibility standards have been altered, allowing blacks the same opportunity as whites to be granted an organ.
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If I understand what you are saying, this is not more equitable. If medical standards are manipulated to provide more white organs to black patients there is an increases likelihood of organ rejection by those black patients due to differential antigen levels. In that case, those donor organs are wasted, whereas if they were given to white patients they would not be because the antigen levels would be compatible. The answer is to stop manipulating standards to achieve the illusion of fairness, and to instead provide monetary and non-monetary incentives for more blacks to donate organs, and to use those organs to black patients who need them. Barry could donate his voice box, and I for one would not miss it.

The current debate focuses on the right of the government to listen to telephone conversations. But Schmidt and his ilk are not particularly interested in that, because they know that verbal or even written conversations are an unreliable indicator of what people are really thinking. They are more interested in behavior. Consequently, they rely on data mining, algorithms (mathematical formulas which track predictability and behavior), and neurolinguistic (sic) programing.
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As noted, Maxine Waters has alluded to this in the video. But there is more evidence as well. Remember when Barry was caught using the exact speech as little Barry Deval Patrick–same words–neurolinguistic phrasing. This is why all the speeches, the teleprompter and all that.

“We also know our good news is another family’s tragedy. That family made the decision to give Sarah the gift of life — and they are the true heroes today.”
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More evidence that good things can happen if government would just get the fuck out of the way. After Obamacare however, that will be impossible. I ran into a doctor tonight and I asked him how Obamacare will affect his practice as a GP. He says it will not. I asked him if he has read the 800 pages and he said no he had not. I asked him who would be affected. He told me people radiologists, etc. If that is the consensus view of the medical profession then I believe they are in for a rude awakening. Dental associations were telling their members that they will not be affected. Now there are a couple of target groups Sebenius has not hit up yet. Why should the insurance companies have all the fun.

Connecting the Dots on PRISM, Phone Surveillance, and the NSA’s Massive Spy Center
By James Bamford 06.12.13 6:30 AM
———————————

As a one-star general, Alexander headed the Army Intelligence and Security Command, where in 2001 he was in charge of 10,700 spies and eavesdroppers worldwide. In the words of James Bamford who wrote his biography for Wired, “Alexander and the rest of the American intelligence community suffered a devastating defeat when they were surprised by the attacks on 9/11.” Alexander’s reaction was to order his intercept operators to begin to illegally monitor the email and phone calls of American citizens who were unrelated to terrorist threats, including the personal calls of journalists.[4]

The White House assures that tracking our every phone call and keystroke is to stop terrorists, and yet it won’t snoop in mosques, where the terrorists are.

That’s right, the government’s sweeping surveillance of our most private communications excludes the jihad factories where homegrown terrorists are radicalized.

Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover string operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee.

Who makes up this body, and how do they decide requests? Nobody knows; the names of the chairman, members and staff are kept secret.

EXCLUSIVE WASHINGTON ­ The State Department has hired an alarming number of law-enforcement agents with criminal or checkered backgrounds because of a flawed hiring process, a stunning memo obtained by The Post reveals.

The background problems are severe enough that many of the roughly 2,000 agents in State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security can play only limited roles in agency efforts to police bad conduct and prosecute wrongdoers.

The problems in the bureau are the latest revelation in an exploding scandal that also involves accusations that members of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s security detail and those of the US ambassador to Belgium solicited prostitutes overseas.

A whistleblower charges that State tried to cover up multiple scandals by removing them from an inspector general’s report.

“Department intakes of new . . . officers since the hiring surge a decade ago have reportedly been flawed, with ‘mitigation’ of troubling histories including criminal matters,” according to a December 2012 memo to State Deputy Inspector General Harold Geisel from a team leader in the IG’s Office.

The memo goes on to state that the troubling backgrounds can pose a problem if the agents are needed to testify at trials to assist prosecutors.

and they are really starting to arrest people now in Taksim in droves, getting nasty

Turkish PM Erdogan said, “l do not recognize any decision that the parliament of the European Union will make on Turkey.” ….well thats the EU project and money shut off then, EU will not take that statement lightly….things gonna change fast. He really might break all the ties with EU.

If I understand what you are saying, this is not more equitable. If medical standards are manipulated to provide more white organs to black patients there is an increases likelihood of organ rejection by those black patients due to differential antigen levels. In that case, those donor organs are wasted, whereas if they were given to white patients they would not be because the antigen levels would be compatible.
______________

That’s exactly as I understood it. And, like you, I questioned the wisdom of the revised policy. Poorer matches. Increased likelihood of rejections. More organs being used. Fewer organs available.

Possibly, a more efficient approach would be to encourage more African Americans to participate in organ donor programs.

Regardless, it’s wonderful that a transplant was made available for this little girl. As a parent, I can’t imagine the fear, worry, and heartache these parents endured as they fought for transplants that would save their child’s life – especially when heard Sebelius’s response: ” Some people live. Some people die.” Damn, is she a picture of human kindness and empathy, or what?!

Obama administration says NSA data helped make arrests in two important cases – but critics say that simply isn’t true
by Ed Pilkington and Nicholas Watt

“Lawyers and intelligence experts with direct knowledge of two intercepted terrorist plots that the Obama administration says confirm the value of the NSA’s vast data-mining activities have questioned whether the surveillance sweeps played a significant role, if any, in foiling the attacks.

The defence of the controversial data collection operations, highlighted in a series of Guardian disclosures over the past week, has been led by Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, and her equivalent in the House, Mike Rogers. The two politicians have attempted to justify the NSA’s use of vast data sweeps such as Prism and Boundless Informant by pointing to the arrests and convictions of would-be New York subway bomber Najibullah Zazi in 2009 and David Headley, who is serving a 35-year prison sentence for his role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Rogers told ABC’s This Week that the NSA’s bulk monitoring of phone calls and internet contacts was central to intercepting the plotters. “I can tell you, in the Zazi case in New York, it’s exactly the programme that was used,” he said.

A similar point was made in anonymous briefings by administration officials to the New York Times and Reuters.

But court documents lodged in the US and UK, as well as interviews with involved parties, suggest that data-mining through Prism and other NSA programmes played a relatively minor role in the interception of the two plots. Conventional surveillance techniques, in both cases including old-fashioned tip-offs from intelligence services in Britain, appear to have initiated the investigations.
____________

Terror Bytes: Edward Snowden and the Architecture of Oppression
by Amy Goodman

Goodman hosts Democracy Now. Article reflects on the hypercritical stance some people against Snowden, missing the real point – infringement by NSA. Features quotes from Toobin (the Toad) and others.

______________________

Clarity from Edward Snowden and Murky Response from Progressive Leaders in Congress
by Norman Solomon (Norman was an elected Obama delegate from CA in 2008)

“House Speaker John Boehner calls Edward Snowden a “traitor.” The chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, labels his brave whistleblowing “an act of treason.” What about the leadership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus?

As the largest caucus of Democrats on Capitol Hill, the Progressive Caucus could supply a principled counterweight to the bombast coming from the likes of Boehner and Feinstein. But for that to happen, leaders of the 75-member caucus would need to set a good example by putting up a real fight.” snip

So this is the scandal Glenn Beck was hinting at on his radio show. It does make sense since anyone who knows anything about American history realizes that obamacare is totally unconstitutional.
*****

Before Its News has an anonymous source who has provided this information on the scandal Glenn Beck promises to reveal on Thursday, June 13, 2013.

Here’s the GLENN BECK scandal that he will reveal within 24 hours…

It will be announced that hacked emails were used to blackmail and extort Chief Justice Roberts. Very embarrassing emails were obtained, and he was told to vote to declare Obamacare constitutional, or his family life would be destroyed.PREPARE.

Mr. Street delivered these remarks at Black Agenda Report’s “Black Politics at the Tail End of Obama” session at the Left Forum, in New York City, June 9, 2013.

“The list of those Obama has thrown under the runaway buses of neoliberal capitalism, military empire, and white supremacy is daunting.”
snip

“Lately I’ve been referring to the president as “Under the Bus Obama.” The list of those Obama has thrown under the runaway buses of neoliberal capitalism, military empire, and white supremacy is daunting. His resume of betrayal includes his maternal grandmother, his preacher, the labor movement (betrayed and abandoned on global trade, labor law reform, the Wisconsin rebellion, the wage- and job-slashing terms of the much-ballyhooed auto bailout and more); environmentalists (abandoned and betrayed on offshore drilling, hydraulic fracturing, global trade, global carbon emission reduction-efforts, nuclear power, clean coal and more), senior citizens (betrayed by the president’s ongoing effort to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits), immigrants (betrayed by a president who has actually increased the number of deportations) civil libertarians (abandoned and betrayed on Guantanamo, rendition, warrantless wiretaps, secret kills lists, whistleblower protection, domestic drones, the infiltration of protest organizations, and more), the mainstream press (recently betrayed by the president’s arch-authoritarian seizure of Associate Press phone records), nuclear disarmament advocates (recently betrayed by Obama’s $547 million request for the B61 nuclear gravity bomb in Europe), and the antiwar community (betrayed by Obama’s sick global drone war, the undeclared war on Libya, the escalating U.S. invasion of Africa, U.S. saber-rattling in relation to Iran, Syria, and East Asia and much more). Last but not least and of special interest to this panel, we have Black America, betrayed by a first technically black president who has said and done less about racial inequality than any American chief executive in recent memory.” snip

Supreme Court decisions appear to “clear the underbrush” in preparation for the big decisions to come. The biggest decision of the 4 issued today is a patent case on DNA. The court ruled you cannot patent naturally occurring DNA. You may patent DNA you “create”.

Regarding the recent accusations of cover-ups and prostitute scandals by Hillary’s State Dept – I’m not saying Hillary is Snow White. Hell, Snow White couldn’t have become as powerful a political force as Hillary, even if she doubled the number of dwarfs on staff. The arena of national politics is no place for sweet girls in white gowns (well, unless they’re actually active participants in prostitute scandals- if you get my meaning).

However I can’t help believing that Hillary would have been very reluctant to wittingly become involved in anything too potentially damning. She knew that she had real enemies in the WH – the worst of them being Obama, himself. Surely she knew the potential risk of exposure and subsequent consequences of any misstep or violation on her part, or any attempt to coverup the missteps of others in her department.

Even if she never intended to run for office again, with powerful enemies in the WH, with MSM functioning as Obama’s propaganda machine, and with the Republicans chomping at the bit to bury her, why would Hillary knowingly engage in any activity that would leave her vulnerable to these hell hounds. I’m sorry, but it just doesn’t make sense.

I’m reserving judgement about any and all accusations until someone shows up with some proof that Hillary actually deliberately and knowingly involved herself in serious violations of policy and/or law.

Like her more iconic media counterpart the “Lady in Red,” Lobna Allamii came to Taksim Square on May 31 with one thing on her mind: protecting the trees in the central square’s unassuming park.

But just minutes into a brisk and brutal police intervention against peaceful demonstrators that day, a now widely published photo was snapped of 34-year-old Allamii — clad in a pink t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops — fallen and unconscious on the ground, her eyes open to the blinding sun and blood streaming from her head.

Like so many other demonstrators since the start of broad anti-government protests two weeks ago, she had been hit in the head by a tear gas canister fired by police directly into a crowd of protesters. Now, says her sister Fatin, Allamii remains in critical but stable condition after two risky emergency brain surgeries. She still hasn’t regained consciousness.

“Right now she remains on life support, and doctors are trying to keep her from waking up in order to allow her brain to heal,” explained an exhausted-sounding Fatin during a phone interview. “Our family has been waiting for almost two weeks, and we’ve kept up our resolve, but in this situation we’re also worried and hanging on the doctor’s every word.”

Just hours after Allamii was taken to the hospital on Friday, she underwent a risky, five-hour brain surgery aimed at stopping internal bleeding and repairing her fractured skull. The next day, a still unstable Allamii was wheeled to the operating room and given a four-hour surgery to repair more bleeding in her brain.

One of the things I have noticed is how the percentage of black professional in this Administration is 3-4 times their representation in the general population, which means what we have here is the principal of affirmative action on steroids.

This would not be a problem for the nation if those particular individuals were loyal to the traditions of this country. But time and again that is not the case. Like Holder many of them hold radical views which places them at cross purposes with our history. And they are statists, as opposed to constitutionalists/

Is this a bad thing? If we put aside the biases we have, especially those who pretend they have none, then the only question that matters is this: as a nation, do we believe we are headed on the right track? The polling data on that question is hardly encouraging.

And while that result could be attributed to other factors as well, it is hard to believe that the conscious promotion of race over qualifications and opposition to the core traditions of this nation is not a major contributing factor.

Turkey’s prime minister issued a “final warning” to protesters on Thursday, demanding that they end their occupation of a park next to Istanbul’s landmark Taksim Square.

Sticking to his trademark defiant tone, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan also rejected condemnation by the European Parliament over the excessive use of force by Turkish riot police against demonstrators.

The comments show that Erdogan appears determined to end two weeks of widespread protests that have trained an unflattering spotlight on his Islamic-rooted government and have morphed into the biggest street unrest of his 10-year tenure.

“We have arrived at the end of our patience,” Erdogan told local party leaders in Ankara, the capital.

“I am giving you my final warning,” he said, issuing the ultimatum to the thousands of holdouts in a sit-in in Istanbul’s Gezi Park, which is next to the square. He urged parents with children at the park to convince them to pack up and go home.

The protests erupted May 31 after a violent police crackdown on a sit-in by activists objecting to a development project that would cut down the trees in Gezi Park and replace them with a replica of Ottoman-era barracks. The demonstrations then spread to dozens of cities, rallying tens of thousands of people each night, and shifted into a broader protest over Erdogan’s rule.

Police have repeatedly fired water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the protesters; five people, including a police officer, have died and over 5,000 people and 600 police have been reported injured.

Protesters object to what they say is the prime minister’s increasingly authoritarian style and his perceived attempts to impose his religious and conservative views on a country with secular laws — charges he rejects.

The RINO message to the world is clear: smart operators come here illegally and stay. Lawful entry takes longer and it is for suckers. And Marco Rubio has shown his true colors. I hope he does not plan to run for president, because as far as most conservatives are concerned he is persona non grata. The script here has already been written by Rove–amnesty first everything else later. Border security is a distaction. Amnesty and citizenship is what the RINOs are after, because they have convinced themselves that this will make them competitive with the hispanics and their base will accept it as long as they give us this watermellon talk about border security. To which I say, wrong on both counts. This will be the catalyst for a breakout of conservatives from the Republican Party and the impetus for the promotion of a third party. As for border security, the passage of this bill will create such a magnate to future illegals that no system of security will be sufficient to control it. And you know what? If they have to build a police state to prevent it, I would still say no police state. There is no more important issue to me than this one, because our sovereignty and future of our culture hang perilously on this one. No candidate and no party who supports this pathway to citizenship will ever get my vote. And I know what you are going to say, but this one is a show stopper for me, because everything hinges on this.
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ERICK ERICKSON
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No More Games

By: Erick Erickson (Diary) | June 13th, 2013 at 04:30 AM | 164

RESIZE: AAA

Chuck Schumer, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, John McCain

So many conservatives have been dancing around the issue of Senator Marco Rubio’s collaboration with Chuck Schumer to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

We have blamed his staff. We have blamed Democrats. We all like and respect the Senator, even if we disagree on this issue. We do not want to blame him for the mess the GOP now finds itself in holding a legislative tiger by the tail.

But having, by virtue of my radio show, listened over and over to those awful pro-immigration reform ads between my monologues, I think we need to stop playing games.

I say this because either Marco Rubio is being played the fool or we are being played the fool by Senator Rubio. He has become the face of support for this legislation and much of the support of the legislation from those on the right has come because of the good will so many of us have for Senator Rubio.

I am in the awkward position of being to the left of the Republican base. I support immigration reform that leaves most non-felon illegal aliens in the United States and provides them a path to legal work, though not citizenship. Citizenship is a step too far – as it unjustly rewards illegal aliens who purposefully chose not to follow our immigration laws.

But, I know a number of illegal aliens and represented a good many of them when I was a lawyer. They, having been unfairly treated by others due to their status, relied on me to redress clear wrongs against them.

These were good, hardworking people who wanted to comply with the law, wanted to work, and wanted to send money home to support families in their native countries. They did not want citizenship. They wanted a paycheck. I am to the left of my readers in supporting their right to stay here and earn a paycheck. I am to the left of my readers in that I oppose mandatory E-Verify. In my mind, no employer should ever have to ask the government if it can or cannot hire a worker.

But I am to the right of the Senate Republicans and Senator Rubio. The solution they propose will do nothing to stem the tide of illegal aliens coming into this country. This law will expand bureaucracy and will, claims to the contrary notwithstanding, expand the welfare state.

What’s more, Senate Republicans and Democrats are now collaborating on “improvements” to the legislation that do not actually improve the law, but rather provide cover for various Democrats and Republicans to make sure the votes are there for passage while ensuring those in tough spots can still vote against it and claim they opposed what they really, privately support.

Senator John Cornyn, chief among the Republicans now, is playing that game. He is offering up an amendment that supposedly will secure the border before setting up a pathway to citizenship. His amendment really does not do that, but provides a cover for Republicans to claim the amendment, and the law once the amendment passes, would. In truth, all Senator Cornyn has done is take the vast majority of the Gang of 8’s Title 1 “Border Security” Section, make a few modest revisions and slightly beef up security on the margins. The result is to follow instant legalization with a false impression of security, while maintaining the path to citizenship. Smoke-and-mirrors.

That brings us back to Senator Rubio. Is he being played or is he playing us?

Contrary to the Americans for Conservative Reform advertisement in which he appears, the law does not prohibit illegals from getting benefits. Sure, some welfare benefits will be excluded as will, though it is debatable, Obamacare, but a sizable portion of entitlement benefits actually flow through tax credits in the tax code that these immigrants would get.

Contrary to the advertisement, the law does not secure the border in any meaningful way, in fact the “border security on steroids” as the ad claims does not begin until after the citizenship push starts, hence the pretend effort of John Cornyn now that this has been exposed.

Contrary to the advertisement, the law will grant amnesty — it is a big play for citizenship even before the pretend efforts to secure the border take place. It is the amnesty Senator Rubio opposed in 2010, though in the advertisement he says we have right now “de facto amnesty”.

Senator Rubio, you, and I can agree to disagree on the legislation. He is entitled to change his mind. He does not deserve the invective hurled his way, including words like “traitor,” but then neither do those who have opposed this legislation and are cast as modern day eugenicists and racists.

The soundbites used in the Americans for Conservative Reform ads occurred before the markup of the legislation. But now we have the legislation before us as it was amended in committee. We should not have the law misrepresented to us in commercials, press conferences, and floor debates by any Senators on either side of the aisle. Sadly, that is what is happening. Yes, Senator Schumer, you know damn well that this law will not stop, but will encourage continued illegal immigration into this country. But you do not care.

I am just shocked, knowing what we now know, that Senator Rubio would continue to support this legislation and that other conservative Senators would too.

This legislation is not the compromise Republicans should sign on to. Republicans in the Senate should stop playing games and vote against the legislation, vote against the Cornyn amendment, and stop giving the Democrats cover to play their own political games with the hopes, ambitions, and lives of immigrants.

This is bad legislation designed to fix a problem it does not fix. No more games; it must be opposed.

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politicalqrm • 9 hours ago

Sorry, Erick, I disagree with you on illegals just working here for a paycheck. They’re using this country to get what they can; they have no attachment to what this country stands for. I don’t want people here who don’t understand what America is about or use a job to prop up their home country.

Employers should use e-verify. If there are two people looking for a job, the American citizen should have the edge. The illegal has already broken the law by jumping the border; why should they receive the same opportunities as an American citizen?

They broke the law to come here. You, as a lawyer, took an oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the state in which you practice. Since when does emotion trump law? So what if they’re nice? John Gotti was beloved by the neighborhood in which he lived, but he broke the law. Jail, punishment, or in their case, get them out of the country.

But I do agree with you about Rubio. Maybe we are being played. I was a big supporter of his in the beginning, but now it seems he’s in Congress to represent only the Hispanics, since most of his time has been spent on this bill.

It seems, though, that other Senators are jumping on the bandwagon. In NH, where I live, we now have Sen Ayotte who has said she would vote for the bill in the name of ‘immigration reform’ Baloney. It’s only amnesty, since waiting time and red tape for legal immigrants won’t be touched. They’ll still have to deal with all the rules that make them jump through hoops. Those that are abiding by the law get kicked and those who break the law get a pass?

We successfully fought off a similar bill during the Bush administration, but I think we’re going to lose this battle.

One of the things which the spokesman for the Heritage Foundation pointed out on Coffee and Markets yesterday is that because amnestied illegals are excluded from Obamacare, it will be cheaper for businesses to hire them, than to hire US citizens who are covered. Therefore, by simple business logic, employers will hire those illegals, and high unemployment among legals will persist. That is one of a hundred perverse incentives in Obamacare as it relates to the issue of immigration.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/13/supreme-court-gene-breast-ovarian-cancer-patent/2382053/
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The Roberts Court is unpredictable because the chief justice himself is unpredictable, unless you turn up the pressure on his, and then he is nauseatingly predictable. But to the extent that one still wishes to predict, this decision should mean that Monsanto will lose. If not then Roberts will need to distinguish this case from that one. If so, then we may see more of the legal gynmastics, contortions and twistifications we saw when he flip flopped and found Obamacare to be constitutional.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the decision for a unanimous court. “Myriad did not create anything,” Thomas said. “To be sure, it found an important and useful gene, but separating that gene from its surrounding genetic material is not an act of invention.”
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Monsanto is different because they did genetically alter genes—they will say the created a modified gene, therefore they have a right to patent it, and if there is no patentable right, then they have no incentive to invest the money in the research and development process, and similar scientific breakthroughs in the future will not occur. It is a bullshit argument, but the majority of the Roberts court is rather likely to buy it.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the decision for a unanimous court. “Myriad did not create anything,” Thomas said. “To be sure, it found an important and useful gene, but separating that gene from its surrounding genetic material is not an act of invention.”

The decision was based on past patent cases before the high court in which the justices ruled that forces of nature, as opposed to products of invention, are not patent-eligible.

“This ruling makes a huge and immediate difference for women with a known or suspected inherited risk of breast cancer,” Jaggar said. “And it is a tremendous victory for all people everywhere. The Supreme Court has taken a significant stand to limit the rights of companies to own human genes by striking down Myriad’s monopoly.”

oh brother…how appropro that this ruling comes out during the surveillance scandal…

amazing, how, during the time we are living in, human beings…citizens…have to fight for our right to be individuals and essentially to almost exist independently…

unfreakingbelievable…a corportation fighting to own the genetic make-up of human beings and a secret governmental surveillance state set up to watch our every move and every thought…

*******

there is a TV show that just wrapped for the season…it is on BBC and called ‘Orphan Black’…an excellent tv show I came upon by accident and was hooked…the lead actress, Tatiana Maslany, plays 8 characters and she just won the Critics Choice Award…

…I bring this up because the characters she plays are all clones of each other…and in the unfolding of the series we learn more and more about how this happened and they begin meeting each other and learning that they are clones…

it is a little know show that has attracted a big following once people start watching it…intriguing…it is exploring how entities are cloning people…people who think they are free willed and human…and the entities seek to own the genetic make-up of the clones…

Rubio is another Obama. A little smarter, a little faster out of the blocks, better able to think on his feet. But still, in essence, Obama II, which means that he is Bush III.

Like Obama he is glad to set up a straw man–the, knock it down, and then claim that a modified Gang of 8 proposal is the only answer. In doing so, he silently rejects a piece meal approach and avoids this path to citizenship nonsense. The latter should be the deal killer.

And like Obama, he plays with around with charged words like amnesty. He claims that the status quo is amnesty, therefore his bill is not amnesty. The truth is it would not be amnesty if current laws are enforced, and because they are not, there is no guarantee that the border security provisions of his bill would be either. It is eyewash.

His claim that they will not be entitled to benefits is a bold faced lie because states will give them, and eventually the federal government will follow suit.

Nevertheless, I commend this tape to you as an exercise in the fine art of deception, done far more artfully than Obama ever could, and therefore even more dangerous to the country. In that respect, it pays to talk fast. Obama could learn a thing or two from this guy.

Last week, I reported that in the midst of revelations about the National Security Agency’s extensive top-secret surveillance operations to collect domestic phone records and internet communications, the Justice Department was fighting to keep secret a court opinion that determined that the government, on at least one occasion, had violated the spirit of federal surveillance laws and engaged in unconstitutional spying.

Last year, after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) released a declassified statement noting that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court had found that the US government had engaged in surveillance that had circumvented the law, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a public-interest outfit that focuses on digital rights, submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Justice Department for any FISA court opinion or order that had reached such a conclusion. FISA court proceedings and opinions are top secret, and the Justice Department said, in essence, “get lost.” EFF sued, and in the course of the proceedings, the Justice Department revealed that the FISA court in 2011 had indeed produced an 86-page opinion concluding a government surveillance program was not constitutionally kosher. But the department provided no details regarding the program that the opinion covered, and it contended the opinion could not be released because it was classified and the department itself did not have the authority to release a FISA court opinion, under that court’s rules.

So EFF went to the FISA court last month and filed a motion that essentially asked the court to tell Justice that there was nothing in its rules that would prohibit a federal court from ordering the agency to release this opinion. And last week, the Justice Department responded, filing a motion arguing that the FISA court did not have jurisdiction to rule on the EFF motion. It also claimed that if the FISA court did rule in favor of EFF on this point, the court would create a precedent that could lead to the release of redacted opinions that would be “misleading to the public about the role of this Court.” That is, the Justice Department was issuing a stark warning to the FISA court: Agree with EFF, and who knows what will happen. “A release involving the disclosure of some parts of a FISC opinion while concealing other parts creates a substantial risk of public misunderstanding or confusion regarding this Court’s decision or reasoning,” the department’s motion stated.

The FISA court did not buy the agency’s arguments. On Wednesday, it handed EFF a slam-dunk victory in this side battle, ruling, “The Court concludes that it has jurisdiction to adjudicate the EFF Motion and that the FISC Rules do not prohibit the Government’s disclosure of the Opinion in the event it is ultimately determined by the District Court to be subject to disclosure under FOIA.” So now the Justice Department cannot hide behind its claim that FISA court rules prevent it from releasing the opinion in response to a FOIA lawsuit.

EFF, though, has not yet reached the promised land. It still must beat the Justice Department in district court on the substance of the dispute: Can the government be forced to release a FISA court opinion—or portions of it—that declared a government surveillance program unconstitutional?

The FISA court, says David Sobel, a lawyer for EFF, “has made clear that there is nothing in its own rules that prohibits disclosure of the 2011 opinion we’re seeking. So we go back to district court and continue our fight under FOIA, having removed DOJ’s argument that it has no discretion to release FISC material.” Pointing to this FISA court decision and a bill recently introduced in Congress that would require the declassification of certain FISA court opinion, Sobel says, “We might be on the verge of rethinking the degree of secrecy that surrounds all these activities.” But he still has a tough fight ahead in this case, for the Justice Department has certainly demonstrated it will fiercely oppose disclosing an opinion revealing government surveillance gone wrong—even when the nation’s most secret court has no objection.

Edward Snowden revealed to the world the startling breadth of the National Security Agency’s surveillance efforts, but his story also highlighted another facet of today’s intelligence world: the increasingly privatized national security sector, in which a high school dropout could bring in six figures while gaining access to state secrets. Over the last decade, firms like Booz Allen Hamilton, where Snowden worked for three months, have gobbled up nearly 60 cents out of every dollar the government spends on intelligence. A majority of top-secret security clearances now go to private contractors who provide services to the government at stepped up rates.

“I like to call Booz Allen the shadow [intelligence community],” Joan Dempsey, a vice president at the firm, said in 2004, as captured in Tim Shorrock’s book, Spies for Hire. No kidding. Here’s a look at our mushrooming intelligence contracting sector:

go to link to see graphs and charts

OUR PRIVATE INTELLIGENCE APPARATUS, BY THE NUMBERS

12,000: Number of Booz Allen Hamilton employees with top-secret clearances

483,263: Number of contractors with top-secret clearances

1.4 million: Number of public and private employees, total, with top-secret security clearances, as of FY 2012

7th: Where employees with top-secret clearances would rank, by population, if they were a single American city

1: Occupations, out of 35 analyzed by the Project On Government Oversight, in which privatization yielded statistically significant savings—groundskeepers

4.4 million: Number of private contractors serving the federal government in 1999

7.6 million: Number of private contractors serving the federal government 2005

In all the hubbub of scandals that have been erupting in Obama’s Washington these days a sentence made by Congressmen Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland), one of Obama’s key supporters, has potential to play a key role in keeping the House in Republican hands. No one paid much attention to the words spoken but Republicans should make hay of it as midterms approach.

Let’s dissect one of the biggest lies floating around Washington, perpertrated by Karl Rove. It got repeated on the Sunday talk shows by two republicans whom I shall not scruple to call traitors to their party and our country. Graham and Rubio say if there is no amnesty bill, then it will “hurt” the Republican Party in 2016. This lie reflects two core assumptions: #1: that if there his amnesty then Hispanics, who are a distinct minority of the electorate will flood to the Republican Party. All available evidence suggests that this is a triumph of hope over experience #2: that it will not reduce the white turnout–which is 74% of the electorate. The truth behind this is the Republican Party seeks to migrate away from their white base, because they thing the white demographic is declining. That is a dangerous assumption, which is likely to produce the very result they fear, which is the loss of future elections. Part of the reason for this, is the vaccum between the interests of the elites, and those of the American People. Since the GOP refuses to fill that vaccum, the emergence of a third party from their ranks is not simply likely, it is inevitable. And the only satisfaction to be derived from this is people like Rove will lose their jobs, which they should. His ability to predict future election is refuted by past predictions which turned out to be dead wrong.